


Throwing Rocks at Your Window

by Linsky



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 13:02:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14213727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linsky/pseuds/Linsky
Summary: The thing about Jonny is, when he has something to say to you, he always wants to say it right away.





	Throwing Rocks at Your Window

**Author's Note:**

> Random snippet set in, like, 2010. It came to me while I was trying to fall asleep the other night, and then I invented a RACY NIGHTCLUB SCENE for Phoenix, and here we are, two thousand words later. Experimenting with brevity!
> 
> Title sort of from Taylor Swift’s “Hey Stephen,” only it turned out I remembered it wrong, and I decided I liked my version better. :)
> 
> [Tumblr](https://linskywords.tumblr.com/)!

The thing about Jonny is, when he has something to say to you, he always wants to say it right away. Which is why Patrick shouldn’t be surprised when Jonny’s hammering on his door at seven in the morning after the road trip from Hell.

Patrick answers, because it could be an emergency or something, but he’s wearing sweats and is at least sixty percent asleep, because they got in at two a.m. and Jonny wouldn’t even let him sleep on the plane because they had to go over game tape and dissect all the things Patrick had done wrong, on the ice and off. “Okay, so,” Jonny says as he pushes his way inside, determined look on his face, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I just have to say—”

“Is this about the girl in Toronto again?” Patrick says.

Jonny hesitates for a moment too long.

“Oh my god,” Patrick says, throwing up his hands and going into the kitchen for coffee.

Jonny tries to say something else from the hall. “Nope!” Patrick calls back, getting his Keurig started. “No, we are not doing this again. I fucking know I didn’t play like I needed to this week, but you know whose fault it wasn’t? The girl in Toronto. Because my sex life doesn’t actually have anything to do with the team. So you can take the next five comments you were going to make about my personal life and shove them up your ass, okay?”

The Keurig finishes gurgling coffee into his cup. Patrick lifts it to his face and breathes deep of the sweet, sweet aroma and goes back out to Jonny.

Jonny’s just standing in the hall, glaring at him. “What, nothing to say?” Patrick asks.

Jonny presses his lips together. “No,” he says, and then—then he turns around and leaves. It’s a fucking miracle.

Patrick inhales one last delicious lungful of coffee steam and then sets the cup aside. He can have another cup later. If Jonny’s leaving without a fight, then Patrick’s going back to sleep for at least three more hours.

***

Patrick wakes up maybe four hours later and doesn’t give much thought to the events of that morning. But in retrospect, it’s definitely when things started to get weird.

Patrick doesn’t notice right away, because Jonny’s still himself when they’re on the ice. He’s, like, pathologically incapable of not telling someone when he has a problem with their play, and he always seems to have more problems with Patrick’s than anyone else’s. If anything, Jonny’s doing it more than usual. They haven’t had this many bench explosions since they were rookies.

But off the ice…Jonny’s weirdly quiet. Patrick notices it one night when they’re in their shared hotel room and he’s fucking around on the internet and suddenly it’s, like, ten-thirty, and Jonny hasn’t yelled at him to get off the computer and go to bed once. He looks over at the other bed, and Jonny’s already in it.

Not just in it. Asleep. But he can’t be, because Jonny _never_ goes to bed without yelling at Patrick to turn off the lights. And to brush his teeth, and to get off his phone, and to go to sleep himself because they have a curfew for a reason, Patrick, and does he want to be at his best tomorrow or not? It’s, like, a ritual. But no, there he is: already asleep.

Patrick gets up to brush his teeth, seriously weirded out.

It could maybe be an aberration. But two days later, in Tampa, Patrick hits snooze on his alarm, and Jonny doesn’t say anything then, either, and three days after that they’re at breakfast and Patrick orders the bacon and _Jonny doesn’t say anything about that, either._

He wants to. Patrick can tell. Jonny’s eying the bacon, and there’s no way on the fucking planet he doesn’t have anything to say about it. But he starts talking about needing his skate blades sharpened instead.

It’s not why Patrick goes out the next night, probably. He would have anyway. They’re in Carolina by then, one of the places they can go out in without getting too much attention, and Patrick’s still getting used to the luxury of being able to drink legally in the States. But it might be why he doesn’t try too hard to seem sober when he gets back to the hotel room.

He stumbles when he comes through the door, and knocks the complimentary styrofoam cups off the little counter thingy, and it’s absolutely the kind of thing Jonny would call him on. But when Patrick looks up, Jonny’s just staring down at his phone screen.

“What the fuck,” Patrick bursts out, and now Jonny does look up, startled. “Do you, like, not even care anymore?”

Jonny looks at him for a second and then narrows his eyes. “Were you… _faking_ being drunk?”

“No!” Patrick says. Which—well, okay, maybe he’s not swaying as much anymore. He’s an athlete. He can control his body when he needs to. It doesn’t mean he was faking it a minute ago. “I did drink, jackass. I had three shots. Are you not gonna say anything about it?”

Jonny gives him this…inscrutable look. That is definitely the word for it. “You made it clear you didn’t want me to say that kind of thing anymore,” he says, and he goes back to his phone while Patrick’s still gaping at him.

It’s not like it’s not true. Patrick did say that. It was totally out of line, the way Jonny kept yelling at him for hooking up in Toronto, like that played any part in his failure to score that week, and of course Patrick told Jonny off for it.

He just…never expected Jonny to _listen._

***

It’s a quiet couple of weeks, after that. Jonny, unbelievably, sticks to it. He doesn’t criticize anything Patrick does off the ice, even the moronic stuff like getting stumbling-drunk two days before a game, and whenever they do talk off the ice it’s about neutral stuff, like what Jonny’s mom is doing for her birthday and whether the Cubs will make a season of it this year.

Patrick hates it.

It’s not that he likes being criticized. No reasonable person would actually want that. But every time Jonny looks at him off the ice now, he’s kind of bland-faced, like he’s not even really there, and Patrick wants to kick him a little to get him to fucking come to life. Only that’s not it either, because they go out to celebrate a win at home, and Jonny comes with them, and he’s smiling and laughing with everyone, and Patrick still wants to poke at him. Wants to annoy him until Jonny says something about the way Patrick’s dancing, or the probably terrible way his hair looks after he’s sweated through the gel, or the extra shot he maybe shouldn’t have had.

Patrick may have some kind of psychological problem.

He does not, admittedly, deal with it all that well. He decides to just shut up and accept how things are now and then proceeds to do the exact opposite by needling Jonny more on the bench. That kind of works, because Jonny’s definitely happy to yell at him there. Then they get off the ice, and the yelling just…goes away, and Patrick should be happy about that but instead he feels like there’s some kind of balloon in his chest that’s about to explode. And then starts following Jonny.

Not deliberately. They’re on the road again, in Arizona, and Patrick’s decided that maybe the way to deal with this new Jonny he doesn’t recognize is to be the kind of person Jonny would want him to be, so that the difference between normal, yelling Jonny and weird acceptance Jonny won’t be so noticeable. So he asks Jonny if he wants to crash in their hotel room and watch a movie instead of going out. And Jonny blows him off and says _he_ has somewhere to go, some friend in Phoenix or something, Patrick doesn’t even know, and when he leaves, Patrick waits sixty seconds and goes after him.

Okay, so it’s deliberate. But it’s not planned or anything. Jonny’s walking, so Patrick doesn’t even have to do anything crazy like get in a cab and have it tail Jonny’s; he just has to walk down the street after him, and maybe he’s going to do something totally normal, like catch up with Jonny and ask to tag along or something, right? Except he doesn’t: he stays a hundred yards back as Jonny turns onto another street, then another, then goes into this kind of sketchy-looking club.

It’s exactly the kind of place Jonny would tear Patrick a new one for going into: a flashing neon cocktail glass on the sign any everything. Patrick frowns at it for a minute or two, then goes up to the door.

It’s Wednesday. There’s no line. There are lots of people inside, though: more than he can even see, with how dark it is. The lights are kind of flashing and it’s confusing and Patrick doesn’t even realize what he’s seeing until maybe the fourth time he passes a couple making out and finally puts together that they’re both dudes.

There are a lot of dudes here. A lot of dudes getting all up on other dudes, and some ladies, too, but some of them might actually be dudes; he doesn’t know. Then he spots another couple and this time one of the dudes is Jonny.

Patrick stares. He can’t help it. Jonny’s making out with the guy—the _guy_ —grinding close, hands on him like he’s putting him exactly where he wants him. He’s kissing him hungrily, eyes closed and face focused. Patrick can see his tongue.

Patrick doesn’t know how long he stares without moving. Finally he turns and pushes his way out through the crowd, shaking with rage.

He’s still shaking when he gets back to their hotel room. He paces for a while; tries to sit and use his phone, but can’t focus; is back up and pacing by the time Jonny gets back an hour later, like two minutes before curfew.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Patrick asks as soon as Jonny comes into the room.

Jonny blinks. His mouth is redder than usual, and his hair is ruffled, like someone had their hands in it. “Excuse me?”

“You can’t fucking pull stuff like that,” Patrick says. “We’re _professional athletes._ You can’t act like the crowd isn’t full of camera phones.”

Jonny looks startled, and then his face goes taut with fury. “Were you _following me?_ ”

“Fucking good thing I was!” Patrick says. “Someone else could follow you next time, someone who doesn’t care as much what happens to you, and then you’ll be bringing shit down on all our heads.”

Jonny stares at him for another moment, then turns away, moving deliberately, and puts his stuff on his bed. “This is pretty rich, coming 

“What is that supposed to mean,” Patrick snaps.

“It means you yelled at me a month ago for telling you the exact same thing,” Jonny says, turning back around, cold fury in his voice.

“That was different,” Patrick says. “This is about the team.”

“This isn’t about the team any more than your fucking hookup,” Jonny says. “You’re just mad about it because mine was gay.”

The word hits Patrick and cuts off whatever he was going to say next. Jonny’s staring at him with blazing intensity, and for a second Patrick stares back, but—“Shit,” he says in a low voice, turning away and going to sit on his bed. He didn’t mean to, like…he wasn’t trying to yell at Jonny about that. He just—seeing Jonny at the club, with that guy—

“Since when are you even into dudes?” he asks.

“Since a while now,” Jonny says. His voice sounds tired. “That’s what I was going to tell you the morning I came over to your condo.”

Patrick looks up and sees Jonny sitting on his own bed, his face kind of hollow. “Shit,” Patrick says again, and gets up without thinking about it. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t really thinking about—” He puts his hand on Jonny’s shoulder, and Jonny relaxes a little, and Patrick takes that as permission to sit down and put an arm around his shoulders.

It’s supposed to be comforting. They don’t really do this much, though, outside of the locker room. Maybe that’s why Patrick finds himself thinking about the guy in the club when Jonny turns toward him and makes it a proper hug. He remembers Jonny’s hands on the guy, pinning him in place, and Jonny’s arms are around him now, and prickles of heat are spreading through Patrick’s upper thighs.

Jonny breathes in audibly, and his hair brushes Patrick’s ear. Patrick’s next breath feels superheated. “Was that, um.” He can feel each of Jonny’s fingers on his back. “Was that all you were going to say to me?”

Jonny shifts a little in his hold. “No,” he says quietly, and then his mouth is near Patrick’s, and Patrick doesn’t know who kisses who first.

“No,” Jonny says again, a few minutes later, when they’ve stopped for breath. He bears Patrick back against the bed, panting, and pins his wrists in place. “You should really have better manners towards your house guests.” And Patrick laughs, leaning up to kiss him, because this is more like it.


End file.
